Harry Potter and the Eternal Curse
by Pseudomort
Summary: For most, death is the ultimate fear. For one, it is an unabtainable wish. Rated M for violence.


Shaking, Harry lowered himself down into his armchair, which was dusty and threadbare from age. It groaned a complaint even under the slight weight of his frailty. Very rarely did he ever leave this spot these days, for he did not have the energy to do so.

Harry was, as of two weeks ago, two-hundred and thirty-two years old. He had had no visitors on his birthday, and he had started to doubt weather he really was still alive. He was undoubtedly older than any normal person was meant to be. Much earlier, they had called him "well preserved"; but much of the preservation had gone out of him by now. He lacked almost all muscle, his skin was paper thin and liver-spotted, and his eyes had sunken. Every breath he drew was labored, every thought clouded.

Harry was the oldest wizard ever without some kind of outside assistance. Why anyone would ever want to live this long, he could not fathom. Ron and Hermione, his fondest friends, were dead. Ginny, his loving wife, was dead. Generations of Potters had died before him; his children and theirs, and then some yet. Everyone he had ever known was dead, and he himself had passed into legend. Yet here he sat.

Harry was dozing there in his chair, which he regarded as his only friend left in the world, when he was seized by a terrible pain in his chest. His lungs froze up, and he crashed to the floor, dust swirling around him. Harry smiled as the life passed at last out of his body.

Harry awoke in King's Cross Station. He sat up and looked down at his hands. They were grimy with dust, but he was young again. His hands were as they were on that fateful day more than two centuries ago, on the last day of Voldemort.

He rose to his feet and looked around. The station was not at all like the last time he had been here; it was not white and peaceful, but was dirty and decrepit, falling apart with age. The tracks were rusted and the benches lay rotting on the floor. Broken glass littered the floor. The only thing that looked remotely intact was an object resembling a steel coffin where a bench had been. Cautiously, Harry moved to it.

It was bare, except for the sleeping face etched into its surface. Given his situation, Harry thought that it was as good a place to sit as any to wait for a train.

Several minutes passed with Harry sitting there until a raspy voice spoke from within the object.

"I'm afraid," it said, "that the trains don't run here any longer."

Fearing nothing now, Harry looked over at the face etched into the surface. Where its closed eyes had been were now openings through which could be seen two red eyes with slits for pupils. Harry felt a pain that he had not felt for centuries; the pain of his scar.

"Voldemort. I thought I'd killed you for good."

"Indeed you did, Harry. I am long dead- unlike yourself." Voldemort paused. "It could have looked like this, you know."

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

"This station. It would have looked this way if you had died when I gave you the chance. It, like the rest of the muggle world, would have fallen into glorious ruin." Voldemort let out a laugh of arctic wind.

"That's why I stopped you." Harry said. That, he thought, is something no one can take from me: the salvation of wizards and muggles.

"Yes, but at what cost?" Voldemort said. "Nothing can be gained without sacrifice. Look there, across the track!"

Leaning against the wall was

the Mirror of Erised, just as it was when he first saw it, down to the vision within.

Voldemort laughed again. "So many years, and yet your wishes haven't changed. Your only wish is to be with them again, isn't it? Your family, your friends, everyone you care about?"

"Yes..." Desperation filled Harry's voice.

"Either must die at the hand of the other."

"What?"

Voldemort cackled. "Either! When you vanquished the Dark Lord, Harry, you made the ultimate sacrifice!" Blood began to ooze out of the crack between the lid and body of the Iron Maiden. Harry leapt up in horror.

"You turned death aside! You will live forever! In death, I will have ultimate revenge! Enjoy immortality, Potter!"

The station began to crumble and fall apart. Harry woke up kneeling on the floor, old and frail once more, and screaming.

Filled with a terrible resolve, he struggled to his feet.

"No! This can't be!" He said. Harry drew his wand from his pocket and place the tip over his heart.

"Avada Kedavra!"

Harry was thrown back against the wall and crumpled to the floor. His blood was on fire; his whole body was wracked with terrible pain. But he was not dead.

Harry stood once more, somehow more easily than before. He looked at his hands; his skin had gone grey, his nails were long and sharp. He wiped the dust from a nearby mirror, and beheld his face. Harry could not recognize himself; his eyes were even more sunken than before, and were red now, and what little hair he had left had burnt away. Strangely, his teeth had regrown into awful points.

A rat scurried behind him. Seized by a grotesque impulse, Harry seized the rat and bit into its flesh, breaking bones and guzzling blood. Strength flowed into his veins, and he dropped the carcass in a mixture of horror and perverse joy.

He looked back into the mirror, and saw the fading reflections of Ginny, Ron, Hermione, his parents, Remus, Sirius, Dumbledore, Snape, and everyone else he had ever cared about or admired- all the people he could never see again. Harry's mind snapped as he beheld the bleak, desolate eternities laid out before him. His countenance darkened as his soul was filled with bloodlust and an undying thirst for revenge.

"Kreature!" Harry shouted. His voice was filled with evil power.

The spiteful house-elf appeared before him, glaring suspiciously.

"What is it that summoned Kreature? He is a free elf- Master Potter gave-"

He was cut off by Harry's hand around his throat. He tore it out before devouring the elf's flesh, leaving a visceral carcass behind him as he set out into the August night.


End file.
